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English Literature | Vol. 6 | December 2019

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Research Article

The Problem of Completeness in Henry James’s The Spoils of Poynton

Gary Totten    University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA    

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abstract

James’s essays on art and exhibitions written between the 1870s and the end of the century illustrate his attention to the composition of the art exhibition within the space of the gallery or museum. James’s perception of art exhibit design and effect inform his representation of Mrs Gareth’s art collection and its setting in The Spoils of Poynton (1897). As James looked to art and the art exhibit for models to represent ‘the workings of the novel’, The Spoils of Poynton suggests the impossibility of artistic ‘completeness’ within the realistic aesthetic.

Published
March 9, 2020
Accepted
Nov. 18, 2019
Submitted
May 10, 2019
Language
EN

Keywords: Literary realism • Henry James • Art exhibition • Gaze

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/EL/2420-823X/2019/01/005

Copyright: © 2019 Gary Totten. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.